000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

292 Notes
from Paul, the Gospel writers, and others. The early followers of Jesus understood the
acts of God in Jesus Christ as continuous with the acts of God described in the earlier
parts of the Bible. Rather than think of two covenants or two testaments, we suggest that
Christians conceive of one biblical story. The Jewish community provides a model for
distinguishing materials within the Scriptures when they speak of their canon as Tanakh.
The word Tanakh is an acronym coming from the Hebrew words torah (instruction, guidance,
or law), nebiim (prophets), and ketubim (writings). To these terms, we add the designations
Gospels and Letters (including Acts with the Gospels, and the book of Revelation
with the Letters). Thus, the full designation for the Christian Bible would be Torah,
Prophets, Writings, Gospels, and Letters.
2. Most Protestant churches regard the first thirty-nine books in the typical Protestant copy
of the Bible as the Old Testament. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons include,
further, the books of Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ben
Sira or Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch. The Orthodox churches add 1 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees,
Odes, Psalms of Solomon, and Letter of Jeremiah. Some Orthodox communions
bring even more books into the canon, such as 1 Enoch. In our view, the Roman Catholic
and Orthodox canons serve the church better than the Protestant version. Most of the
books of the Old Testament were completed about 400 BCE. (Daniel, written 168–165
BCE, is a definite exception.) Consequently, Protestant knowledge of Judaism, as far as
the canon is concerned, effectively ends at 400 BCE. However, following that time,
Judaism continued to generate significant theological literature—for example, the Apocrypha,
the Pseudepigrapha, and early rabbinic writings such as the Mishnah and the Talmud.
Protestant sermons can help congregations learn more about Jewish theology, life,
and witness from 400 BCE through 200 CE by tracing themes from the thirty-nine books
of the Protestant canon into these later works. In the Jewish canon, Tanakh, the Torah is
made up of the same books in the same order in both Jewish and Christian Bibles. But in
Tanakh the prophets come next and include Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2
Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, and the books Amos through Malachi. The
Writings are then grouped at the end of the canon—Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song
of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Many Jewish communities think that revelation continues as subsequent generations
study these materials.
3. For example, Clark M. Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church
Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 139–66; Ronald J. Allen
and John C. Holbert, Holy Root, Holy Branches: Christian Preaching from the Old Testament
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).
4. More fully, see Clark M. Williamson, When Jews and Christians Meet: A Guide for Christian
Preaching and Teaching (St. Louis: CBP Press, 1989), 1–14.
5. A more detailed exposition of theological misappropriation of the Old Testament is found
in Allen and Holbert, Holy Root, Holy Branches, 15–31.
6. Empirical confirmation of sermonic neglect of the Old Testament comes from Joseph
Faulkener, a researcher in communication at Pennsylvania State University. Faulkener
studied the content of more than 200 sermons in typical congregations of the Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ) and found that only 24 percent of sermons in these congregations
were based on texts from the Old Testament. In these congregations, ministers
preach 76 percent of their sermons from the New Testament. While we cannot
quantify the importance of the Testaments to the church simply according to how often